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The moon is just the Moon. The sun is just the Sun. Those are their names, their identities. But the stars have no individual name, and that makes them more special than both celestial bodies put together.
Xiao? What are you thinking about right now?
Xiao looks at the boy with the green sweater and the sad smile and imagines them dissolving into one another, like honeyed milk into sugared tea. Like a punch to the gut, or the mashing of lips. They’re the same thing anyway; both leave only pain behind. He thinks of leaving their mark deep in each other’s celestial bodies, a bullet in a wound, grit in an oyster. They’re the same thing anyway; everyone leaves once they see what’s inside.
The courage of stars is something nobody cares enough about to praise them for. Xiao cares, because he loves them and because they deserve to be loved by somebody. Xiao knows exactly how brave a star is. They keep shining their endless light be it night or day and even long after death. Even if nobody sees that light, even if nobody loves that light and thinks that it’s nothing more than a meaningless spark, it still twinkles on without regard for appreciation or applause from the masses.
Xiao loves stars, but he’s tired of seeing them only through telescopes. He’s tired of seeing them from millions upon millions of miles away. He wants to be sucked up into the vacuum of space, wants to be there to see everything first-hand, is willing to burn alive if it means he’ll get to touch a star. Nobody will miss a bit of scattered light, anyway, not when there are prettier constellations to admire.
Beautiful things, he replies thoughtfully, tilting his head to the sky. Why?
You spend too much time in your own head. I like the sound of your voice. Will you tell me a story?
If you say please.
You’re always pleasing to the eye and you know it.
Flatterer. Don’t think you can get what you want by being a suck-up.
Xiao. The story? Please?
Xiao doesn’t like stories. Doesn’t like telling them, doesn’t like hearing them. But he will always make an exception for the boy sitting by his side.
Look above, look into the light—do you see that? That’s Orion, the Hunter, raising his blazing blue-white club to shake it at the skies. Over there is Canis Major, the celestial wolf, brightest star of stars and Orion’s loyal companion. And that’s Lepus… no, not Lupus the wolf but Lepus the Hare, a prey animal being eternally chased down by Orion and his wolves. Lepus won’t ever get caught, but it can’t ever stop running either. They’re all trapped in eternal limbo, really. I guess it’s not the worst fate someone could suffer, but…
That’s sad. Why are constellations’ stories so sad?
Constellations are pretty, but they can be sad too. I don’t think the constellations are as sad as the stars, though. Constellations always have names, but the stars themselves rarely do. They’re just part of a bigger whole. They don’t need an individual name. It’s sad, but it’s true. They don’t need names.
Oh, but they do, the boy with the bruised face says. They’re sitting next to each other on a hill and their bare ankles knock together whenever the wind howls through their hair too viciously. It is early into winter and whispering trails of cold breath puff out into the freezing air whenever each of them speak. Traces of what had once been now gone. Everything deserves a name . His eyes are blue-green and they look a little like stars themselves, shining out of his tired face with bright and brilliant impunity. Xiao is completely and utterly fascinated by it. Nothing should ever have no identity. That’s just cruel.
Even the stars?
Even the stars.
How will I name them from so far away, then?
I’ll take you to space one day, the boy promises, just the two of us. Just us. His face is lined with exhaustion and his hands tremble when he fists them in his shirt, but his beautiful eyes blaze with wild animal passion and Xiao wants to believe him so badly it hurts. I’ll take you up there and then you can name them all one by one, okay?
What if they don’t want me to name them?
Nothing goes without a name for that long without desperately desiring an identity. They’ll want a name from anyone who cares, let alone someone who loves them as much as you. I would want a name, if I were a star. I would want any name you gave me.
They’re stars. They won’t love me back. They can’t love me back.
You love them and they’ll love you back. I’m sure of it.
How are you so sure?
How could anyone not fall in love with you?
Xiao is beginning to think they stopped talking about stars a while ago.
This—whatever relationship he has with this boy with a voice like the song of a nightingale—isn’t going to end well. Xiao hates this. He doesn’t know how to be friends with someone without hurting them; he knows how to take people apart, how to put them back together almost-but-not-quite the same, but he doesn’t know how to be gentle with someone who deserves to be treated gently. He doesn’t know how to love, but he knows he doesn’t want their time together to end at all. He just wants to sit with this boy and point out more constellations to him—he just wants to—
Stay away from me, please. This isn’t going to end well.
Everything ends. Why should we have to sacrifice current happiness while we wait for future pain?
You don’t understand.
I think I understand far more than you think I do.
An oyster, huh? A pearl, huh? To the inexperienced eye the pearl and the grit are one and the same. He dreams of cracking the boy who flinches at sudden movements open to dig out the pearl from his fluttering ribcage— this is my pearl, I gave it to you and you can’t keep it anymore, do you understand? It’s mine. I won’t let you keep it.
He couldn’t keep his pearl in the end, but he thinks of it often and wonders if he even remembers what it looks like. His pearl, resting deep inside another’s celestial body, like shackles chaining the heart. Is it safe there? Will it be taken care of?
In another world, he gets what he thinks he wants. He gets the pearl out, clean and red-handed. Or maybe he gets the grit out, guilty and shining. He can’t tell the difference anymore, but at least this way he has something to call his own.
In yet another world, perhaps the best world, he doesn’t get what he wants but he does get the boy’s rosebud lips against his, soft and plush and perfect. He gets their bodies colliding against each other and creating a galaxy that’s completely new, gets the sleepy morning after and the steamy night after that and a perfect everyday for the rest of their lives.
He gets wicker baskets filled with apples that never run out and gets the boy who will never think that chopping those apples into bite-sized pieces for him is a chore. He gets to check the fridge with the knowledge that there will always be almond tofu waiting for him whenever he wants a plate of it. He gets the boy who always changes the radio stations until he finds a song they both like, because it’s no longer me against you or even me and you but us against the world. Xiao gets not what he wants but what he needs and his pearl remains safely in the boy’s chest, with the boy’s own in his.
What are you doing? This isn’t your cue.
The room spins for a moment, dangles high in the sky like a planet then falls away like shooting stars, and the radio is playing his favorite song but it’s not something the boy with the sad smile likes. The lights are off and the whistling of fireworks has stopped but he can still hear the boy with the green sweater in the far-off distance. Xiao will just keep walking to the sound of his voice, then.
Why are you so against the idea of gift-giving pearls, Xiao? It’s like trying to deny your own heart the right to beat. Whether you’re willing or not, it’ll happen. Pearls are meant to be given away.
It isn’t a good thing. It’s dangerous. It hurts people.
Only if you let it.
I don’t think that’s true.
If you don’t believe in that, what do you believe in?
Do I have to believe in something?
Yes. Everyone believes in something, even if you don’t want to admit it.
… You. Oysters. People. I believe in oysters, not their grit and not their pearls. Isn’t that enough?
The boy with the blue-green eyes sighs. Looking at him is a bit like looking at the Sun; Xiao’s eyes hurt and his cheeks redden if he looks for too long, but he can’t stop himself, not until the image of his face has been burned into the back of his eyelids. Even when he’s not looking at the boy Xiao is still thinking about him.
It’s funny. You don’t even see the irony in it.
Is it not enough for them to just be here and be happy? Do they really have to be holy and have to worship an idea people think is true too? To think people genuinely believe the stealing of pearls is a good thing and that everyone should think the same—it’s a lot to ask of a person without a pearl of their own. Once someone tricks you into giving away your pearl to someone else you’ll have nothing left, and Xiao knows better than to ever trust a thief to perform a proper exchange of hearts.
Xiao isn’t asking for much, he thinks. He wants to dip his cold toes in a warm river and not have to worry it’s secretly the Lethe. He wants to share some sugared tea with the boy he likes and not have to worry it doesn’t have honeyed milk. He wants to hold an axe and not have to worry about needing to bury it in the boy’s body. But he doesn’t know how to do anything other than want. Trust is a foreign concept.
That doesn’t change the fact that he wants so badly it curves into hopelessness, because he wants this and he wants that but all he ever gets is the taste of his own blood in his mouth... Oh. He’s bitten his tongue again.
Keep them out, the boy with the sweater says. The color of his sweater has faded so much that it now looks more like an unwashed grey than the vivid green it had once been. His smile is less sad now and Xiao is grateful for it. Keep it in. Drink it all. Xiao drinks his tea, wishing honeyed milk had been added to the mixture.
It’s the only thing you have left. Savour it. Enjoy it. Xiao enjoys the only thing he has left. He feels hungry and empty, like he desperately needs something to fill his hollow spaces and there’s not much else he can do, anyway.
Don’t move. Keep moving. Make your own decisions, or stay here and rot. I’m not your master and you’re not a dog. He stays there and he rots. He’s sitting under a big hollow tree with spiderwebbing branches that extend to all four corners of the earth and he stays there and he rots. Xiao doesn’t want to walk to the sound of his voice anymore; he’s tired of doing all the walking. It's time for him to be walked to.
I want to stitch you up, the boy with blue-green eyes says, and he says
Do it. The light will stream out regardless.
I want to eat you, the boy drowning in the pool says, and he says
Do it. The light will stream out regardless.
So the boy with blue-green eyes who is drowning in the pool reaches for Xiao, and he goes willingly, and he is stitched up and he is eaten and the light streams out regardless.
Told you.
Who said that?
Xiao had always thought he would be the hunter in this particular play. The thieving wolf with claws and the relentless hunter with an axe, yanked close to one another by their gravitational pull, wrapped up in each other’s impossible orbit and leaving poor little Red Riding Hood to live her boring little life. Unstoppable force meets immovable object. Who will win? Why does it matter? Xiao doesn’t want this to be a competition, he just wants to be hap—
He sees all things in slants of black and white. The wolf had stolen his pearl from him, so he’s the villain. The hunter had gotten his pearl stolen from him, so he’s the hero. The boy with the tousled sea-green braids is the most fiercely independent person he’s ever met but Xiao only knows how to be part of a single whole. So Xiao had played along because that’s all he knows, had battled the wolf and lost friends along the way and been the hero he isn’t for the sake of a useless show.
I don’t think you know what you’re doing, little Red Riding Hood tells him. Her eyes are as red as her hood and Xiao wonders if that means something. It might be a metaphor; the monster he sees plain as day is still there if he peeks beneath her hood. What does it mean, then, if the wolf he’s been fighting for so long has eyes like the stars he loves so much?
I know exactly what I’m doing, he says. I made my choice and I don’t regret it.
Okay. She nods and tugs her hood over her head to hide her eyes but he already knows its color. Don’t come to me for help when the regret sets in.
The stage lights dim. He and the wolf are supposed to meet in the center and Xiao winces at the loud, mean booing from the crowd when the boy with freckles like a smattering of chestnut stars prowls onstage, looking absolutely nothing like the wolf Xiao had thought he was. Wolves, in his mind, are tricksters unlike foxes. Foxes trick people for their own amusement, for the sake of entertainment. Wolves trick people out of malice, a desire to cause suffering and inflict pain.
This boy standing in front of him is cherry-cheeked and bright-eyed even though he’s defenseless and Xiao is carrying a two-handed axe big enough to split his skull in two. This boy smiles so brightly at Xiao even though he knows what’s about to happen, the expression he’s wearing honest and open and so very sweet. This boy is no wolf. How could Xiao have ever thought he was?
The truth is that I’m not the hero. I don’t have a sword or a shield.
You have an axe.
I have a wound where my pearl was and I’m trying to hold all my blood in but the light streams out regardless.
So you’re not the hero?
I’m just a victim. I just got robbed, that’s all. By you, so… So maybe you’re the bad guy, maybe you’re the wolf, but I don’t want to be your good guy. I don’t want to be your hunter.
I don’t want to be your wolf. I never wanted to be your wolf, Xiao. I just wanted to love you.
What?
All hunters need a wolf to kill.
You just wanted to be something to me.
I just wanted to be something to you.
I just want my pearl back. Can you please just give it back? And then we can go back to normal—we can just be friends again, don’t you see? I want to show you more constellations—
(Cygnus, Casseiopeia, Aquila, Lyra, Centaurus, Andromeda—he can’t believe he hadn’t gotten the opportunity to point them out to the boy before everything had gone wrong—)
I can’t just… give it back. It’s not possible, it’s a part of me now. Love doesn’t end like that, you know. Nobody falls out of love that fast. An axe will get swung either way.
Why are you doing this to me?
I’m sorry, Xiao, but you did this to yourself.
I meant… why aren’t you trying to get away? Why aren’t you stopping me?
You’ve narrated this entire story so far. Shouldn’t I at least get to choose how the ending goes?
So now it’s too late, because I might not want to be the hunter and you might not want to be the wolf but that’s all people know us to be.
No. I don’t care about other people’s opinions. What does it matter if people think of me as the wolf? Who cares? I certainly don’t. But… it matters to you, doesn’t it? Being known as the hunter?
I don’t… I don’t know how else to… If I’m not a hunter, then what am I?
Right. If it matters to you, then it matters to me. So I’ll be your wolf for you. Swing your axe, Xiao. This is your grand debut. Isn’t that exciting?
A pause.
Aren’t you happy? Aren’t you glad? After all, this is what you wanted. I’m just enabling you. Are you sure you’re not looking forward to this?
I don’t know.
You don’t want me to have your pearl, right? And I’m never going to give it back to you, because I don’t think I know how. And anyway… I like having something of yours, Xiao. So…
A bell tolls heavily. Just once, but it’s damning enough on its own.
That’s your cue. Do you still remember what you told yourself you’d do if it ever came down to it?
That’s his cue. Xiao doesn’t want to swing his axe; he wants to kiss his wolf until they dissolve into one another forever, honey and sugar and all the milk tea in between. He wants their lips to crash violently against each other like waves breaking over sharp rocks at shore. He wants to keep walking to the sound of his wolf’s voice, safe in the knowledge that he’ll reach his destination eventually. He doesn’t think he can stomach what he’s supposed to do now. He doesn’t think he wants to do this anymore.
But that’s his cue, so Xiao throws the axe and it spins through the air, end over end over end like a sharp knife slicing through a lump of red meat. He can’t walk up to the boy to do the deed—Xiao can’t bear the idea of seeing the look in his eyes when he swings his axe. The audience cheers and there’s a slick sound and then a decisive thunk, like the two halves of meat falling apart on his cutting board, and now there’s no more honeyed milk to add to his sugared tea. It feels nothing like a victory. How does this story end again? He doesn’t want to think about it.
The hunter is left with nothing in the end, that’s the part of the story everyone neglects. The hero always pays the price. Red Riding Hood gets to live and the wolf gets to die but the hunter is left with only his bloodied hands. All Xiao gets is an axe buried in a body and bloodstained hands with no river nearby to wash them clean. This isn’t what he wanted, far from it, but that had been his cue. So no more kissing, no more dissolving, no more tea. This is it.
This is our kingdom, the boy says. He looks tired, but death would do that to anybody. This is our oyster. This is our pearl. What will you do with it?
Pearls are not meant to be shared. Anyone and everyone knows that, so this means that our kingdom is the grit.
Maybe it’s the grit, but to the inexperienced eye they are one and the same. Nobody will be able to tell the difference, not even us.
Can’t we just lay in bed and kiss until the clock stops ticking? Can’t we just enjoy the taste of each other’s mouths and ignore the room falling away from beneath us? Why must we bother with grit and pearls when what matters is the oyster?
But no, that’s not something anyone has ever asked before and Xiao is nothing if not a coward. So he takes the grit and the bitter defeat and becomes its king and this is good, it’s a good thing because maybe now the boy dead in the pool will finally shut up and leave him alone. Maybe he’ll finally get his pearl back.
There is a claw-footed ivory bathtub here in their kingdom. The pearl in their oyster, if you would. He remembers lazy golden afternoons spent soaking in the tub with the boy who won’t shut up, the two of them kissing again and again until he could easily recreate the taste of cold lips when alone. He remembers bringing his fingers up to his face, thinking of all the places that boy’s lips had touched and imagining light spilling out of each crevice. He could stitch it up, seal it over, but light would still shine through regardless.
His fingers find those same spots now, and the light is still there but the boy who he had wanted dead so badly is finally dead and it’ll never be the same again. The bathtub hasn’t been used since then. It really is like a pearl, then; beautiful yet meaningless until someone gives it too much meaning and it loses all of its beauty.
He gets his pearl back eventually. He had to pull out his axe and dig through muscle and flesh and bone to get it back, but he knows that’s just the grit. Xiao isn’t the inexperienced hunter he’d been so long ago. He knows the pearl is located in the heart.
He lifts it up and out of the boy’s dead body and notes that it’s completely unfamiliar to his eye. His pearl has spent so much time in a celestial body that it’s completely unrecognisable now. It’s been melted down to liquid and then forged into starsilver. Now it’s the core of a star; it’s not his pearl anymore. Maybe it hasn’t been his for a long time. He spent all this time trying to get back something that isn’t his, that he’s beginning to realise was never his to take back. But the boy had been his. But the boy is gone now.
Little Red Riding Hood had been right. He regrets everything.
In another world, Xiao wakes from a terrible nightmare. He’s sweating through his clothes and each heaving gasp he takes shudders through his chest like knives being driven into his ribcage, but he isn’t alone. The boy with eyes like stars helps him sit up and gets a glass of water for him to drink, smooths the pads of his fingers over Xiao’s knuckles and promises him that there’s no need for an axe. They go back to sleep wrapped up in one another and that’s it. No monsters hiding under the bed, no need for a fight. It’s just them and the stars and the white rabbit they adopted and named Lepus. It’s a happy ending.
In this world, Xiao is living a terrible nightmare. He…
That’s… a really depressing story. Wow. I didn’t think you’d be able to come up with something so… real? Maybe? Yeah, real. That’s the word.
Sorry.
Don’t be. It was really creative. The boy with the green sweater shifts in his seat. Is he uncomfortable? Unhappy? The boy, then. The… wolf.
It wasn’t a wolf, not really. But what about it?
It dies at the end?
Yes. At the hunter’s hand.
That sucks. It should have lived and they should have made up. It might’ve been unrealistic, but it would at least be a less sad ending.
Yes, Xiao hears himself agreeing distantly, his hesitant voice faint even to his own ears. Yes, he should have lived.
A moment of silence.
But how does the whole story actually end?
What do you mean? Aren’t you the one telling it?
Well… yes, but I don’t remember the ending. The original one about Red Riding Hood. The hunter kills the wolf before it can eat the little girl, right? Then…
This is the first I’ve heard of this story, so I’m not sure. It’s a nice tale though. If you really don’t remember the end, why not just make it up?
I can’t think of a good ending.
Why not?
The wolf gets killed, doesn’t it? Even if it really was bad, that’s just… wrong. What good ending is there in a story where someone has to die to achieve it?
It is night, and the stars have already come out to play, tumbling over one another cheekily in child-like fashion and shimmering like distant bracket torches set in the hinges of the sky. The boy with the eyes like stars nudges his shoulder gently, his gaze warm and kind. Their hands find each other, slim fingers lacing together so naturally that it’s genuinely frightening. His face has been set aglow from the candlelight and if there is any best time to kiss him, this would be it.
If you killed someone, if you had to kill someone and you did, what would you want that someone to say to you afterwards?
I don’t want to kill anybody.
I know, Xiao. I don’t think you ever really did. But if you had to…
I guess I’d want them to forgive me. But I don’t… If I did that, I wouldn’t deserve—
Okay. The boy with the eyes like stars smiles at Xiao, and he’s never been more beautiful than he is in this singular shining moment. I forgive you.
Xiao would have traded the rest of his life for just one more second with the boy. Just one single instance; one last chance to take in the swooping curve of his brow, the elegant dip of his cheekbone, the slip of a sweet smile. But all beautiful things burn out far too quickly, and just like the fleeting flutter of a butterfly’s wings the boy had disappeared far too soon.
I’m sorry, Xiao says, his voice cracking on the last syllable. I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve that. You… if anyone in the history of the world deserved better, it would be you. I wish I had done things differently...
So do I.